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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26750824">why cling to hope of homeward bound</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/SyntheticRevenge/pseuds/SyntheticRevenge'>SyntheticRevenge</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(only slightly), Angst, Character Study, I just loved the episode and I love Martin and this happened idk, M/M, MAG181 AU, Mental Disintegration, more or less</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 12:08:44</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,877</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26750824</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/SyntheticRevenge/pseuds/SyntheticRevenge</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Martin sort of loves having nothing to do. Not having to walk endlessly towards the unknown is pleasant. If he stays in one place, he gets to keep what remains of his hope, buoyant and warm in his chest, rather than having it erode with every step they take towards Elias and every word Jon says.</p><p>He knows they have to leave. Obviously. There’s a world to save. But being selfish, just briefly, it’s--god, it’s nice! It’s just nice, there’s no other word for it. He gets better by the day, and Jon--Jon gets worse. </p><p>(Martin doesn't want to leave. Jon wants to let Martin have nice things, for once.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>244</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>why cling to hope of homeward bound</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Honestly, idk. 181 confirmed my longstanding headcanon about what happens to Jon without the Eye, so naturally instead of writing about that like I meant to, I wrote a slightly canon-divergent AU centered on...Martin. Checks out, at this point. Anyway, hope you enjoy! Title's from the Mechanisms.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Martin didn’t realize how much he missed sleeping, but this is a </span>
  <em>
    <span>nice</span>
  </em>
  <span> bed, and the soft sounds Jon makes pressed into his shoulder are enough to make a man never want to get up ever again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He sort of likes it here, against all odds. It feels like all his stupid, little-kid fantasies of being a prince and living luxuriously and having a torrid romance that consumes his life. Plus, he quite likes Salesa, actually. He’s funny and charming, even if he did technically make everything worse. Jon doesn’t like him, but Jon--Jon has sort of been...off, if Martin’s honest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin knows why. It’s obvious. He’d be an idiot not to know. But he doesn’t really want to think directly at it. If it were a problem, Jon would tell him, and Martin wants to </span>
  <em>
    <span>stay</span>
  </em>
  <span> until he can’t any longer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s nice to rest, to just--to not want to </span>
  <em>
    <span>run</span>
  </em>
  <span> from something, at the very least. It’s nice to sleep, and eat, and be </span>
  <em>
    <span>human</span>
  </em>
  <span>. He knows he’s not at Jon’s level of inhumanity, whatever that may be, but being divorced from basic needs for so long and then messily making up with them has made him realize that he quite likes being human, actually. He likes hunger pangs and creeping exhaustion and the relief of getting rid of them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon seems much less enthusiastic about the situation. He sleeps a lot, and poorly, and eats only when Martin nags him about it, even though he seems like he’s been starving once he actually starts. He smokes, too, for the first time since the apocalypse started. Martin watches him at it sometimes, looking rail-thin and fogged-over, leaning on the railing of a grand stone balcony, somehow looking every inch the dashing king of an enemy nation Martin always imagined would come riding in to kidnap and/or marry him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(Maybe Martin’s altogether a little too into the whole castle thing. Sue him. It’s been a rough fucking--well, however long it’s been, considering time is a broken concept now.) </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin sort of loves having nothing to do. Not having to walk endlessly towards the unknown is pleasant. If he stays in one place, he gets to keep what remains of his hope, buoyant and warm in his chest, rather than having it erode with every step they take towards Elias and every word Jon says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He knows they have to leave. Obviously. There’s a world to save. But being selfish, just briefly, it’s--</span>
  <em>
    <span>god</span>
  </em>
  <span>, it’s nice! It’s just </span>
  <em>
    <span>nice</span>
  </em>
  <span>, there’s no other word for it. He gets better by the day, and Jon--Jon gets worse. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It started out alright. They woke up from their three-day nap disoriented and yawning and pleasantly confused by the situation. Martin recovered, after a long shower and their conversation with Salesa. Jon...didn’t. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin noticed. Of course--of </span>
  <em>
    <span>course</span>
  </em>
  <span> he did, he’s not blind. He thought at first it was just Jon adjusting to not knowing anything. The long pauses, the empty looks, those are normal symptoms of being cut off from the omniscient god you’ve had in your head for years. Martin thought that </span>
  <em>
    <span>very </span>
  </em>
  <span>confidently, at first, as if there’s studies for that sort of thing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As the days wore on, though, it became increasingly clear that he was only getting worse. It’s been a week now, and time seems to be more of a stagnant pond than something with a current in Jon’s mind. His recall of when it is and what’s happened to them jumps around wildly, and Martin tries to swallow his heart back down from where it’s leapt into his throat every time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Like now, he’s just woken up from one of his near-countless naps, and the first thing he says when he blinks out of that initial daze is “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Martin</span>
  </em>
  <span>?”, and he sounds exactly like he did the weeks after they first met, when Martin was just doing his best to live down the dog incident and not fuck anything else up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It terrifies Martin, and he tries not to just squeak when he says “Yes, love?”, and Jon blinks rapidly in confusion, chest quickly rising and falling against Martin’s arm, clearly trying to figure out--but he gets there, and settles.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What?” he asks, vacantly, as if he’s just arrived in the room to find Martin glaring at him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin doesn’t want to be the one to suggest leaving. He </span>
  <em>
    <span>really</span>
  </em>
  <span> doesn’t. It’s stupid and selfish but he likes it here and, more importantly, he </span>
  <em>
    <span>hates</span>
  </em>
  <span> it out there. This is almost a domestic fantasy. This is almost the next best thing to the cabin, before the world ended, and--and he wants to </span>
  <em>
    <span>keep </span>
  </em>
  <span>it, alright?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So he’s not going to suggest it. Jon’s an adult. If he wants to leave, he can say something. Except Martin knows if he stays lying in bed with Jon any longer this morning, the worry in his chest is going to cave it in and he’s going to blurt something along the lines of </span>
  <em>
    <span>we have to get out of here</span>
  </em>
  <span>, so instead he quickly shakes Jon off and wanders out with no warning. Considers taking Salesa up on his incessant invitations to daydrink with him, or maybe finding Annabelle and picking a fight, or something. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Anything to keep his mind off what’s happening to Jon without the Eye, because if he thinks about what’s happening to Jon without the Eye then he’s going to think about what happens after they save the world, and if he thinks about what happens after they save the world, then he’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>really</span>
  </em>
  <span> gonna want to stay here forever, and--well, </span>
  <em>
    <span>fuck</span>
  </em>
  <span>, right?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He ends up idly wandering the grounds, hand trailing slightly overgrown hedges, a bit lost. It’s nice that this place is free of the entities, because he knows himself, and he knows that this is a moment for the fog that trails him through his entire life to sneak up and swallow him whole. He </span>
  <em>
    <span>is</span>
  </em>
  <span> alone, here, isn’t he? Honestly, maybe he always is. He’s so in love with Jon it burns when he breathes, but. Annabelle was right. Jon </span>
  <em>
    <span>doesn’t </span>
  </em>
  <span>need him. Jon only really </span>
  <em>
    <span>needs</span>
  </em>
  <span> the Eye. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The sick thought comes unbidden--Jon will only ever need Martin if he loses the Eye for good, if this...this </span>
  <em>
    <span>decay </span>
  </em>
  <span>keeps going. Martin hates himself for even thinking about that, for even--for even </span>
  <em>
    <span>remotely</span>
  </em>
  <span> considering some sort of selfish, twisted upside to this horrendously fucked-up situation.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He has to do the right thing. He has to--he has to suggest they leave. He does. He really, really does.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He finds himself back in the castle, looking for Jon in the endless hallways. It reminds him a bit of the Spiral, and he sort of wishes Helen were there to liven things up and yank him out of his head. But no. Just him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Salesa’s playing piano in one of the--Martin calls them ‘great rooms’, because it’s posh and he quite enjoys saying it, but he has no idea what it’s actually called. Jon’s sat on an extraordinarily overstuffed fainting chair, head cocked, listening and staring blankly at the wall. His expression makes Martin feel a bit ill, and he sits next to Jon, shaking him slightly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He blinks out of it, and smiles at Martin, still with that vacant quality he’s had for days now. “Where’ve you been?” he asks, reaching up to brush Martin’s hair back, and Martin reaches up to hold his wrist, squeezing his eyes shut and just shaking his head in response, unable to form words through shame and worry and </span>
  <em>
    <span>fear</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Fear wasn’t supposed to be able to get him here. This is absolute bullshit.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We have to go, Jon,” he forces out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Jon says, and he sounds confused. Martin doesn’t open his eyes to look. “You’re happy here, Martin, why would we leave?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Because you’re--come on, Jon, don’t make me--” Martin says, sighing. He doesn’t notice Salesa’s stopped playing until he speaks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Because your brain is eating itself without its master to feed it!” he says, with a tone that indicates he thinks he’s being helpful. He also seems to think it’s hilarious. “Auto-cannibalism! No new knowledge coming in, only eating the old, regurgitated stuff! Like a particularly gross housecat.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I miss the Admiral,” Jon says, as if that’s a response, and Martin bites his lip, finally opening his eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jon,” he says, softly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What?” Jon asks, and Martin sighs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Come on.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh,” Jon says, as if what Salesa said just caught up with him. “Yes. Right. Well…” He sighs. “I sort of </span>
  <em>
    <span>like</span>
  </em>
  <span> being human again.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I do too, but--but we can’t save the world if you--if there’s none of </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span> left.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll be fine once we leave,” Jon says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How can you know that?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Dream logic.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know if that’s--” Martin starts, but Jon squeezes his hand and cuts him off.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Martin, you like being here, and I--I have time before I’m completely </span>
  <em>
    <span>gone</span>
  </em>
  <span>, so...why not run the clock out? Take all the time we can?” Jon asks, and Martin shakes his head violently.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t do that,” Martin says. “Don’t be sweet and self-sacrificial, I </span>
  <em>
    <span>hate</span>
  </em>
  <span> it when you do that. I wish you wouldn’t put this on me, I wish--”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I just wanted to do something </span>
  <em>
    <span>nice</span>
  </em>
  <span>, after…” Jon starts, then blinks, eyebrows furrowing. “I, uh. Sorry, were we--what were we--”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Salesa laughs, and Martin hurls a pillow at him, hard as he can manage, then puts a hand on the side of Jon’s face, thumb stroking his chin. “We’re leaving.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alright,” Jon says. “Why?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Because I love you,” Martin snaps, getting up and pulling Jon to his feet. “And because you’re a stubborn, </span>
  <em>
    <span>weirdly</span>
  </em>
  <span> romantic bastard, and I’m sick of it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon laughs in confusion. “Sorry?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>should be</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Jon!” Martin says, and he doesn’t even know why he’s angry, but he’s on the verge of tears. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nothing was supposed to be like this. He was supposed to have a normal fucking life, and--and this was the one </span>
  <em>
    <span>nice thing</span>
  </em>
  <span> to happen in the entire apocalypse, and--and the man he loves is evaporating in front of him, so he has to be a mature adult, even though he would really like to just throw a tantrum and sit on the ground and refuse to get up. He was never allowed to pull that as a kid, and he sort of wishes he could try it out now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He gets them packed, refuses Salesa’s offer of copious alcohol for the road (more because he’s fairly certain it wouldn’t work than because he wouldn’t like to try), and drags Jon out of the dead spot, trying not to break down and </span>
  <em>
    <span>sob</span>
  </em>
  <span> as he feels the end of the world sink back into his bones.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon stands straighter, breathes deeper. The confidence of an addict who knows where his next fix is coming from. He smiles at Martin for a brief moment, and it’s a frightening thing--in the soft, human interlude they just walked out of, Martin had somehow forgotten that sometimes a monster wears Jonathan Sims’s skin. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’d also forgotten how fiercely he loves that monster.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks for reading! All feedback is appreciated &lt;3<br/>Find me on tumblr @witnesstotheend</p></blockquote></div></div>
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